


Tears

by all_the_broken



Series: Welcome to the 21st Century Mr Rogers [2]
Category: Captain America (2011), The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-02
Updated: 2012-06-02
Packaged: 2017-11-06 14:57:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/420154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_the_broken/pseuds/all_the_broken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy Lewis does not cry. Ever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tears

Darcy Lewis does not cry. Ever. Not a single tear had passed through those pretty little peepers since she was nine years old and she was not afraid to tell anyone that.  
The first time she told Jane, the scientist had made her sit through roughly twelve-dozen sad and heart-wrenching movies. Darcy had gotten bored ten minutes into the first one and started drawing on her jeans with blue pen.  
When she first told Tony, he had poked and prodded and insulted her, her job, and her universe, but he’d stopped when she slapped him for calling her mother a harlot.  
Clint had just looked at her with a bland kind of disinterest, carefully filing away the information in the back of his ‘DARCY LEWIS; CUTE FREAK WITH TASER FETISH’ mental compartment and continued drinking milk from the carton despite Pepper’s protests.  
At first, Natasha had just stared too, with more of an interest than Clint, and then she smiled, patted Darcy on the arm and said something in Russian that equated to ‘That’s my girl’ before going to train with Thor.  
Thor, on the other hand, had replied with a simple ‘until I met you and Jane, I had not either.’ Then there was hugging, and hell, who was Darcy to say no to a hug from a hunk?  
Bruce, who was usually referred to as Dr. Banner by Darcy, (kick-ass, yes, disrespectful to people who were nice to her, no,) had nodded and suggested that she maybe try some kind of therapy that would unlock her inner emotions. That conversation didn’t last long.  
When she announced it to Steve for the first time, it had been in a hostage situation. The guy with the big alien gun pointed at her head had asked why she wasn’t crying and she rattled the sentence off with a certain carelessness that came from saying it at least once a day. And then Captain America’s shield whizzed by her head, knocking both the gun and the guy to the side and Darcy almost collapsed with relief. However, when he offered her a hand up when the battle was over, there was disappointment in his eyes. So Darcy did the only thing she could do. She confronted him.  
That was one of their many shouting (well, shouting from Darcy, snapping from Steve) matches that lasted the whole night. It ended rather abruptly before Steve really had a chance to say his piece and Darcy so was not finished hers.  
They didn’t speak for two weeks.  
For once though, it was Darcy who showed up at the Tower with freshly baked apple pie in hand. Steve accepted the treat and her apology but when she tried to broach the subject again, he cut her off. “Let’s just leave it for now Darcy, okay?”  
The second time she told Steve, it wasn’t while he was dressed as Captain America, or when he was even being Captain/Agent Rogers, he was just being Steve and they were sitting at the library and reading history books.  
“I am so bored I think I could cry,” Darcy whined, taking off her glasses and rubbing at her eyes. “But-”  
“You haven’t shed a tear since you were nine, I heard,” Steve cut her off a little coldly.  
Darcy placed her glasses back onto the end of her nose and glared at him. “What crawled up your ass and died?” she asked with a slight flip of her hair.  
“Nothing crawled anywhere,” Steve replied quietly but his tone was strained with the effort to keep calm. “But not crying isn’t actually something I’d be proud of,” he hissed over the table, ignoring the librarian’s loud shushing.  
“I thought superheroes were supposed to think that crying showed weakness.”  
Steve’s jaw clenched. “Tears aren’t weakness, they’re human,” he shot back. “They’re part of an emotion that makes us, well, us. Darcy, crying isn’t weakness; it helps us more than you think, it gives us enough strength to move on with our lives after tragedy and heartbreak and whatever else the world manages to throw at us.”  
“Like freezing us in Antarctica and bringing us back seventy years later?”  
“When everyone we care about is dead,” he affirmed. “Well, except the team and- Darcy, what’s wrong?” he asked suddenly. He face was buried in her hands, shoulders heaving gently. “Darcy, what-are you... crying?”  
He reached over to her, but his fingers barely brushed her hair before she was jerking away. “No! But everyone you care about is dead? Really Steve? Everyone? There’s no one in this century you care about except the rest of your team? At all? I should’ve known.” She stood with a signature flourish that she had learned from Tony, and stormed out of the library.  
Steve managed to catch her at the next corner. “Darcy, I wasn’t finished! Are you so pig-headed that you can’t even hear what I’m saying? I was trying to tell you that I care about the rest of the team, and you.”  
“But you said-”  
“And,” Steve said firmly. “I said and.”  
And he may have been mistaken but Darcy’s eyes shone as he hugged her and her cheek was wet when he placed a chaste kiss there. But no, that would be impossible. Darcy Lewis does not cry. Except when certain super soldiers admit that they care.

**Author's Note:**

> These are going to be semi-connected one-shots because I suck at writing long stories (dreams of being an author = shattered) and they'll all be Darcy/Steve and Thor/Jane. Maybe even Natasha/Clint if you're lucky. But still, I can just imagine Darcy and Steve fighting all night and then Steve baking something and showing up at her apartment to apologise, can't you?


End file.
